4 Fun Activities for Maths Week England
Maths Week England is a relatively new event in the teaching calendar, having only started in 2019. Its rise has been meteoric, however, and with over 2,300 schools and 1.8 million pupils taking part last year, it is now the largest national maths festival in the world!
This year, Maths Week England takes place between the 14th and 18th November. As always, its aim is to simply share the joy of maths and to create a future where everyone is confident working with it.
At its heart, maths is all about looking for patterns, making predictions, spotting connections and solving problems, so that is the focus of this blog. Busy Things has a wealth of activities, which cover these areas. We cover a few here, which we’ve made free-to-play for this week, so read on!
1. Patterns
Mathematicians say that mathematics is the study of pattern, i.e., of patterns and structure in numbers, and patterns and structure in geometry.
Seeing patterns and structure in the world around us is a key mathematical trait, which we develop from the first days of life.
Our Line up activity is a great activity for children to play to investigate patterns and sequences.
Do we need a tall or small man next to follow the pattern?
Why not try it here? It’s suitable for children from Reception right through to Year 4.
2. Predictions
Following on from patterns come predictions, which look at how what has occurred in the past can help us work out what will happen in the future.
Again, Busy Things has many of these cause-and-effect-type games, which with their quirky sound effects and great graphics really engage the children.
Falling wall is a great example. The children have to decide where to place the pink men and worms in order to keep them safe when the wall falls forward.
Will your pupils get the characters squashed time after time or learn from the early attempts?
Try it here. Again, it’s free to play all week!
3. Connections
Making connections within the mathematics syllabus allows children to see how mathematical concepts relate to one another, and helps them simplify them in their minds. Understanding that addition is the opposite of subtraction, for example, helps children check if they’ve found the right answer. The same goes for multiplication and division.
The Miner Birds series of games on Busy Things is great for securing this knowledge, and is always in the favourites list.
Children can play on their own against the computer, or against a classmate. The first to reach 20 worms by answering the maths (multiplication and division, addition and subtraction) questions wins!
Children can play from Year 1 to Year 6, as the difficulty level automatically defaults to the level of the year group it is accessed from.
Settings can be changed manually as well.
4. Problem-solving
Tangram puzzles challenge children to arrange multiple shaped pieces, called tans, to form a larger shape, and are great for teaching problem-solving skills (and helping them learn about geometrical concepts!). You could, for example, have two triangles combining to make a square or even a parallelogram.
Tangranimals on Busy Things focuses on tangrams that make animal shapes.
Children have to manipulate the shapes so that they fit the spaces available. Once complete, the animal becomes animated much to the children’s delight!
They’re great fun and available from Year 1 to Year 6!
Summary
We hope this blog has given you some new ideas to incorporate into your Maths Week. Maths is a lot of fun and creative too!
As part of this blog, we’ve included several of our activities which you can play for free from 14th-18th November. These are: Line up, Falling wall and Tangranimals. To play them, you just need to click on the relevant link!
Want to see more activities?
If you’d like to see more of our activities, we’d love you to take out a free 28-day trial with us! Simply click here for this. You’re more than welcome to have a virtual tour via Zoom too. If you’d like one, contact us here and we’ll get in touch!